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Kyrie hoped that Dante Dire had the place under surveillance of some sort. She had to—simply had to—arrange for him to follow them that night. She wasn't quite sure how to do it, except, of course, by managing to pretend that the last thing she wanted was for him to follow them.

There was a good chance she wouldn't need to do anything to get him to follow them. She suspected he had gone after Tom and Rafiel after seeing them leave the bed-and-breakfast. If that was the case, any of them going near the aquarium was likely to cause Dire to follow. She just wished she could be sure. She also wished she could be sure that Tom hadn't blinded him for a few weeks. Because if Tom had, then it was going to be very hard to entrap him.

While Tom was busy at the grill and Keith was keeping up with the tables, in the brief post-dinner lull, and before Anthony came in to spell Tom, she took the time to go outside, into the parking lot, looking for Dire's car.

Instead, she found Dire himself, standing outside the back door, smoking. His dark eyes, she noted, looked fine.

He grinned at her, as if he knew what she was looking at. In the next few words, he proved he did. "Well, Kitten," he said, "you and your boyfriend are very rude." He shrugged. "Not that I resent it from you. I like my women with a bit of spirit."

"I am not your woman," Kyrie said.

He grinned again, flashing white between taut lips. "Oh yes," he said. "I know that. But you know, shifters' lives are long and all that might yet change. Your boyfriend is too dumb to know what's good for him, so he's not likely to make old bones."

"I think my boyfriend is perfectly fine," she said, snappishly. And meaning the snap, too, because Dire annoyed her—besides putting a chill up her spine—and because she thought he would expect her to react this way.

Dire shrugged. He took a pull on his cigarette, making the tip glow bright. "I'm sure you do. You're both very young. Young as ephemerals. But he doesn't understand that, when needed, one must sacrifice a friend . . . or two." His gaze on her was speculative, and she felt as though she were being considered as a "sacrifice."

"And have you sacrificed many friends?" she asked, wrapping her arms around herself.

If she expected him to flinch or look guilty, she would have been sorely disappointed. He threw his head back and laughed. "One or two . . . dozen. But I'm still here, aren't I?"

"Yes," Kyrie said, and judging the time to be right, added, "In fact, I wish you weren't here so much. What are you doing here, all the time? Are you following us?" Mentally, she projected the feeling/idea that tonight of all nights she didn't want him around.

She watched his eyes quicken, but nothing more in his gaze gave away that he'd caught on to something. His voice was quite disinterested and amused as he said, "I find you entertaining."

 

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Framed